Saturday, April 14, 2007

I urged my brother to check out the Friday night marathon for 'The Riches' on FX this week. So I got back from work this morning to find this email waiting for me.....

Subj: ok, you bastard.From: BillTo: Toby i started watching The Riches tonight, by chance, and hit the marathon at the very start. you will die horribly for getting me addicted again to a TV show. may you rot in a hell with No TV. yeah, it's an excellent show. bleeper. thank GOD it just ended. at 2 a.m. time for bed. you know, this FX has churned out some amazing stuff... Rescue Me, Nip/Tuck, Sunny Side, and now this. And, they recognize the fact that no one is tied to a normal primetime viewing regimen anymore, that you can log on any time and anywhere to get news you normally couldn't get till 6 o'clock at night, or on your doorstep in the morning... So they're pretty damn smart to show these little mini-marathons for the too-lazy-to-program-your VCR or TiVo crowd.

Bill falls into that category.

He also didn't use the word "Bleeper"......

What the hell. He needed something to fill the void left by 'Rome'!BCnU!Tele-Toby

Friday, April 13, 2007

Ivy, my bestest of friends and an "Iddiot" of legendary status, has an idea regarding the introduction of Herarat Aviation in this week's episode of 'Lost':

I've got a cool new Lost theory -- mine own, too. After discovering that Herarat Airlines is an anagram for (Amelia) Earhart, I posit what we know. Earhart's plane disappeared in the South Pacific in 1937. My mother believes that she was accompanied by a male co-pilot. [Toby's note: His name was Fred Noonan.]

No wreckage was ever found, no sign of bodies. They simply...disappeared.... And I believe they wound up in the cave on Lost Island where they are known to the producers as "Adam and Eve."

It's an interesting idea, but even though Ivy is, as I said, my bestest of friends, I'm hoping she's wrong.

Because in Toobworld, we already know what happened to Earhart and Noonan. In 1937, they, along with many other Earthlings of that year, were kidnapped by an alien race known as the Briori who brought them to the Delta Quadrant to serve as the genetic basis for repopulating a planet there. They were kept in stasis until the year 2371 when they were discovered by the crew of the starship Voyager. ('Star Trek: Voyager' - "The 37s")

We also saw an elderly Ms. Earhart kept in a cell by a very unique collector named Dr. Glendon back in the early 1970s. When we saw her, Glendon was adding one of the last of the old-style gangsters to his collection, August Kolodny. ('Night Gallery' - "Rare Objects")

However, I think Glendon was duped into believing that he had Amelia Earhart. She was not the real thing but an incredible simulation. That sort of fake passed off as the real thing happens all the time to collectors, who find they must continue to present the forgery as the original in order to save face and their investment.

So that splains away that discrepancy!

But Ivy may eventually be proven right in regards to the identities of "Adam & Eve" from the caves on 'Lost'. If so, then I'll have to figure out some other splainin to cover the discrepancy between 'Lost' and 'Star Trek: Voyager'.

BCnU!Tele-Toby

"That is the theory that I have and which is mine and what it is, too."Miss Anne Elk'Monty Python's Flying Circus'

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Brian-El, the "Iddiot from Krypton", offered the following line of thinking:OK, follow me here:--It is now very clear that the *real* leader of The Others is this person/thing called "Jacob".--"Jacob" appears to have Godlike powers. Or at least The Others think he does. He is kind of a...super-doctor.--"Jacob" would be analogous to "No. 1" in The Village.--"No. 1" in The Village was, perhaps, revealed to be none other than The Prisoner himself.--Lost opened with a closeup of Jack's eye opening after the crash.--"Jack" can be a diminutive of "Jacob".Do you see where I'm heading?Like Mushrat would say on 'Deputy Dawg': "It's pozz'ble; it's pozz'ble."BCnU!Tele-Toby

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Tim Kring, creator of 'Crossing Jordan' gave a shout-out to himself on the show tonight.

Nigel was angry at Woody because the cop had not yet visited Jordan in the hospital. (She had undergone brain surgery to remove a tumor.)

So Nigel figured that Woody had something much more important to do instead - like stay home and watch a new TV show about superheroes.

For us at home, this was a reference to Kring's other show, the mega-hit 'Heroes'.

But luckily for televisiologists everywhere, there's no Zonk involved. No mention was made that specifically nailed the reference to 'Heroes' - no title, no character names, nada.

For all we know, it's a re-imagining (a la 'Battlestar Galactica') of 'Jetman' (from 'He & She' back in the late 60s)!

Kring could fashion an actual crossover between his two shows, without 'Crossing Jordan' losing whatever semblance of realism it has. No super-powered characters need show up - it could just be Dr. Mohinder Suresh, as a cousin of Bug's.....

Not sure if there's any point trying to splain away the Zonk from Monday night's episode of 'How I Met Your Mother'; it was so detailed, there's just no way around it.

After Robin gave Lily a gag bridal shower gift that was basically a plastic fantastic basic black Dick In A Box, the other women discussed how it was exactly like the gift that Miranda gave to Samantha on 'Sex And The City'. Or was it from Samantha to Charlotte? I get those women mixed up.

The women also discussed whether or not they watched 'Sex And The City' on HBO in its original form or watered-down on TBS.

On April 20th, the televersion of 'The View' will be seen in an episode of 'One Life To Live'. Joy Behar and Elizabeth Hasselbeck will be seen on their set talking with ex-major league ball-player Tate Harmon about his new career - that of an underwear model.

Suddenly, Tate Harmon is going to go all "Cruise Missile" ballistic in an exuberant display of his infatuation with Adrian Cramer. I'm not sure if this means he'll be jumping on the couch; you'll have to tune in that day to see for yourselves.

'The View' has been seen in TV shows before, and in several different TV dimensions, at that. Not all of the participants on the show have appeared, just as with the actual show itself. But Joy Behar seems to be the constant among the regulars. (But Baba Wawa has never appeared in any of the live-action shows.)

In Earth Prime-Time, Erika Kane appeared on 'The View' during an episode of 'All My Children' with Joy, Elizabeth, Meredith Viera, and Star Jones. Also appearing in that episode as themselves were Clay Aiken, Cheyenne Jackson, and Regis Philbin.

Joy, Star, Meredith, and Lisa Ling once welcomed 'Bette' Midler as a guest on their show in an episode of the Divine Miss M's sitcom.

Sportscaster Casey McCall of 'Sports Night' (the title of both the actual series and the show within the show) chatted with Joy, Meredith, Star, and Debbie Matenopoulos on their program. Because of that conversation, he realized he should salute the "little people" of his show who make him look so good on the air with little recognition otherwise.

And although the show itself wasn't seen, we know other citizens of Toobworld watch 'The View'. Brock mentioned once that he could have picked up a romantic suggestion made by 'Reba' just by watching the show. And Dr. Romano tried to intercede when two women wanted to go at it in the 'ER' by saying that if he wanted to watch a catfight, he'd just tune in to 'The View'.

They watch the show over in the Tooniverse as well - Peter Griffin, the 'Family Guy', is an avid fan. In fact, his baby son Stewie once appeared on 'The View' when the co-hosts began fighting over a cheesecake. (This may have been an apocryphal fantasy.) He later caught another episode on TV where the girls did nothing but cluck like chickens.

Over in the sketch comedy dimension. the favorite past-time for the co-hosts would be to make Debbie get in a sack with some wild creature - a rabid raccoon for instance (as seen on 'Saturday Night Live').

And then there was the time alternate versions of Joy, Meredith, Star, and Lisa were seen doing their show on 'Spin City', which has to take place in a different Toobworld because their mayor of New York City was Randall Winston. 'Spin City' has to be removed from the Main Toobworld because it took place at a time when Rudy Giuliani had to be the mayor not only in the Real World but also in Toobworld (as established on such shows as 'Seinfeld' and 'Mad About You').

Not a bad resume for this chatfest that's been around for almost a decade.

Once again, check out 'One Life To Live' on April 20th if you want to see 'The View' make a reappearance in Toobworld.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

A new blog has been added to the list there at the left. You'll find "Odd Sheets of Paper" down among the personal viewpoints on the list. (I really should add headers to separate the various categories....)

It's only just begun, but looks like it's going to be opinionated, edgy, angry, even a bit erudite. It's not exactly germane to the topic of Inner Toob, but whatcha gonna do when it comes to family? Yeah, "Will" is kith and kin to this particular Toobmeister.

Last year, the Guardian asked its online readers what they thought about a new companion for the Doctor on 'Doctor Who'.

Here's what I offered up:

How about Jamie and Zoe?

Thirty plus years on, they don't remember the Doctor, so that opens up a lot of fresh opportunities in how to bring them back on board.

And ever since seeing "The Chronicles Of Narnia" last year, I think the little girl from the movie would work in playing Zoe as a young girl; bring her on board before she traveled about with the second incarnation of the Doctor.

Sunday, April 8, 2007

Over the past few years, I've contributed a lot of fictional cereal sightings from TV shows to Topher's Breakfast Castle website. (You can find the link, as you can probably guess, to the left.)

But it wasn't until today when I thought to look through his list that I realized that two of my contributions actually linked two TV shows together!

Here's the reports from Topher's site:

Fruity Puffs

'Psych'In a flashback to 1985, the main character of USA Network's 'Psyche' (Shawn Spencer) is upset that his box of Fruity Puffs didn't contain the promised magic decoder ring, so he wanted his policeman father to haul in the cereal people for questioning.

'Men In Trees'An episode of ABC-TV's 'Men In Trees' had boxes of Fruity Puffs and Rice Critters on display at the Elmo, Alaska, general store. The Fruity Puffs came into play when Anne Heche used a box to hide her face from other shoppers as she talked with the game warden.

The last time I had fictional breakfast cereals linking two TV series, it was an oddly painted box with a black dot in the upper corner seen in an episode of 'My Favorite Martian' and in another one from 'The Courtship Of Eddie's Father'.

What made that interesting (slightly) outside of the Toobworld reality was that both shows starred Bill Bixby.

And even though most of us have grown up watching Ms. Whitney as Rand, suddenly people were looking at her in a new perspective:

JennyA12This woman looks like Chloe from 24!

PirateBooty68Holy crap it does look like Mary Lynn!

ihatetaftThat blonde chick looks like Chloe on 24.

Having read those comments and seen the video, the temptation was there to declare that Janice Rand was a distant descendant of Chloe O'Brian. But that lasted only a second.

Despite the fact that I'm a proponent for the strength of Toobworld genetics and that an exact DNA combination can "echo" throughout hundreds, even thousands of generations, there is no way Chloe and Janice can be related. That would mean they share the same TV dimension.

But Chloe lives in a world that's had several TV Presidents who will never become POTUS in the main Toobworld, which must follow in the footsteps of the Real World when it comes to the depiction of its major world leaders. And the nuking of Valencia, California, doesn't exactly play into the timeline for 'Star Trek' either.

There's just no way, despite all of the Zonks it has engendered, that I'm ever going to allow 'Star Trek' and the other shows in its franchise (except for the animated series) to ever slip out of Earth Prime-Time to boldly go in some other TV dimension!

However....

Mary Lynn Rajskub does have a series regular in her resume who could be the great-great to the nth power grandmother of Janice Rand.

Mary Lou Collins worked backstage in the offices of 'The Larry Sanders Show' as a talent booker after Paula left. 'The Larry Sanders Show' is also a major pain in the kiester when it comes to Zonks, but at least most of them can be disabled with some logical two-stepping.

Granted, she's not as exciting a character to have in your family tree as Chloe might have been, but not every hero from the future can boast of another hero in their past. That sort of thing only happens in Toobworld if some form of reincarnation is also involved. (See the Simon brothers of 'Simon and Simon'.)

Still it makes for a nice genealogical link between 'Star Trek' and 'The Larry Sanders Show', although it will probably be always considered theoretical.

Besides, Chloe spells her last name wrong anyway.....

Click here for a side-by-side comparison of Grace Lee Whitney and Mary Lynn Rajskub to judge for yourself.....

Just An Old Cowhand On The TiVo Grande

As the Trickster once said, "Reality is boring, that's why I change it whenever I can."
I'm just "The Man Who Viewed Too Much", and "Inner Toob" is a blog exploring and celebrating the 'reality' of an alternate universe in which everything that ever happened on TV actually takes place.
Most of my theories about the TV Universe come from thinking inside the box and thus can't be proven. But I've never been one to shy away from a tall tale.....
Remember: "The more you watch, the more you've seen!"